The Perception & Action Podcast

A look at some recent research examining contextual interference, blocked vs random and variable vs constant practice.  How should coaches put these concepts into practice?   Articles Quantifying Contextual Interference and Its Effect on Skill Transfer in Skilled Youth Tennis Players Effects of practice schedule and task specificity on the adaptive process of motor learning Exploring the applicabi...

A discussion with Leah Robinson, Associate Professor of Movement Science from the University of Michigan. Topics include the importance of fundamental movement skills, how these skills should be measured, perceived motor competence and interventions for promoting movement in young children.   More information about my guest: http://www.kines.umich.edu/directory/faculty/leah-robinson http://www.cma...

Looking at research that has evaluated the Constraints-Led Approach (CLA) to coaching. How effective is this approach? What effects do changing constraints actually have on performance? How does the CLA compare to other more traditional coaching methods?   Articles Scaling the Equipment and Play Area in Children's Sport to improve Motor Skill Acquisition: A Systematic Review Switching tools: Perce...

What processes are involved when movement coordination is self-organized around constraints? How does the performer take into account their own action capabilities? What is the best way to design practice according to these ideas? A look at behavioral and ecological dynamics.   Articles The Dynamics of Perception and Action An Ecological Dynamics Approach to Skill Acquisition: Implications for Dev...

The first in a 3 part series on The Constraints-Led Approach to Coaching. What exactly are constraints? What are some common misconceptions about them? Why is understanding the theory behind them critical for using them effectively?      Articles Constraints on the development of coordination Change of Direction and Agility Tests: Challenging Our Current Measures of Performance   More information:...

A discussion with Brian McCormick, Head basketball coach at Broward College in Florida. Topics include current problems with the way we identify and develop talent, coaching fake fundamentals, and designing practice to increase game intelligence and awareness.   More information about my guest: https://learntocoachbasketball.com/ https://twitter.com/brianmccormick https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian...

A discussion with Dave Mann, Assistant Professor at Vrije University in Amsterdam. Topics include gaze behavior, handedness and stance in batting; developing vision standards for Paralympic sports; and how expert athletes seem to be able to flexibly use central and peripheral vision   More information about my guest: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/David_Mann5 https://twitter.com/david_l_mann...

Is motor learning a single process that occurs at one time scale as suggested by the famous learning curve? Or are things happening simultaneously at multiple time scales, with some adaptations taking seconds and others years? What might this mean for coaching?   Articles/links: Warm-up Decrement in Performance on the Pursuit-Rotor The second facet of forgetting: A review of warm-up decrement The...

Just in time for the start of the World Series: a look vision and gaze behavior in baseball batting. Which aspects of vision are critical for hitting? Do great batters have superior vision? Where do good batters look before the ball is released?   Articles Defining elite athletes: Issues in the study of expert performance in sport psychology The visual function of professional baseball players Vis...

What are the key differences between describing an athlete's movements, an athlete's knowledge about those movements, and the instructions used by a coach to facilitate those movements? How can these different perspectives inform and sometimes hurt each other?   Articles/links: What does the questioning of expert coaches reveal about the biomechanical knowledge of forward ice hockey skating? Integ...

A discussion with Tim Buszard, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Sport, Exercise & Active Living (ISEAL) & Tennis Australia. Topics include scaling sports equipment appropriately for kids, working memory capacity (WMC) and its role in implementing coaching instructions, whether contextual interference has value outside the lab, and Tim's skill acquisition blog.   More information about my...

A discussion with Gaby Wulf, Professor in the Department of Kinesiology and Nutrition Sciences, UNLV, and Rebecca Lewthwaite, Director of Rehabilitation Outcomes Management at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center and adjunct faculty at USC. We discuss the OPTIMAL theory of motor learning: Optimizing performance through intrinsic motivation and attention for learning.   More information...

Why is it important to include emotional context in practice? A look at the evidence for the beneficial effects of anxiety in training and guidelines for implementing pressure training. Articles/links: The dynamics of expertise acquisition in sport: The role of affective learning design Training with mild anxiety may prevent choking under higher levels of anxiety Perceptual-motor learning benefits...

When a coach identifies a maladaptive movement pattern in an athlete, what is the best way to change it? Do formal biomechanical evaluations help? How can we identify the origins of the problem? How can we improve agility and speed without disrupting perception-action coupling?   Articles/links: Do baseball pitchers improve mechanics after biomechanical evaluations? A problem-solving process to id...

What is "transfer of training"? How should we be assessing it and what does research tell us is the best way to achieve it?   Articles/links: Motor imagery and 'placebo-racket effects' in tennis serve performance Transfer of Movement Control in Skill Learning Changes in balance coordination and transfer to an unlearned balance task after slackline training: a self-organizing map analysis Riding a...

A discussion with Mark Williams, Professor and Chair of the Department of Health, Kinesiology, and Recreation at the University of Utah. We discuss designing effective practice, talent identification and development and anticipation training.   More information about my guest: https://faculty.utah.edu/u6006972-ANDREW_MARK_WILLIAMS/research/index.hml   More information: http://perceptionaction.com/...

Can the two opposing theoretical views of the role of attention in choking under pressure be integrated? A look at some theories that have attempted to do so and consideration of what still needs to be done in this area.   Articles/links: Choking Under Pressure: Multiple Routes to Skill Failure Anxiety and perceptual-motor performance: toward an integrated model of concepts, mechanisms, and proces...

A discussion with Sam Vine. Senior Lecturer of Psychology & Human Movement Science from the University of Exeter. We discuss recent research and unresolved issues related to the Quiet Eye, appraisal of stress and performing under pressures, and Sam's new VR training venture, Cineon Training.   More information about my guest: http://sshs.exeter.ac.uk/staff/index.php?web_id=Samuel_Vine https://www....

Is focusing one's attention on skill execution as a result of increased self-consciousness really the primary cause "choking under pressure"?  Is the evidence in support of this theory flawed?   Articles/links: Putting pressure on theories of choking: towards an expanded perspective on breakdown in skilled performance The fourth dimension: A motoric perspective on the anxiety–performance relations...

A discussion with Edward Coughlan. Lecturer in Skill Acquisition at the Cork Institute of Technology in Ireland. We discuss practice design, skill acquisition, deliberate practice, and occlusion training with Chin Up Googles.   More information about my guest: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edward_Coughlan2 http://dredwardcoughlan.com/profile/ https://twitter.com/DrSkillAcq http://www.chinup...

Meeting webpage:  http://perceptionaction.com/saaz/ If you are interested in attending please take the short survey on this page to help choose a date and provide info about presentation topics.

How have researchers used virtual environments to distort reality, disobey gravity, create conflicting feedback, and alter an athlete's perception in the name of science? How have they effectively brought rate events in sports into the lab?   Articles/links: Behavior of College Baseball Players in a Virtual Batting Task Perceiving and Acting upon Spaces in a VR Rugby Task: Expertise Effects in Aff...

A discussion with Anne Benjaminse from the Department for Human Movement Sciences at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. We discuss the role of attentional focus in injury prevention and recovery, using video feedback and VR as rehabilitation tools, and making "return to play" decisions.   More information about my guest: http://www.rug.nl/staff/a.benjaminse/ https://www.researchgate.net...

How effective are VEs for sports training? Have they achieved good fidelity? Can they induce competitive anxiety? Does augmentation help performance? Do they show evidence of transfer of training?   Articles/links: Distance Perception in Real and Virtual Environments Do monocular time-to-collision estimates necessarily involve perceived distance? Motion in depth: Adequate and inadequate simulation...

A discussion with Emma Mosley, Lecturer in the School of Sport, Health and Social Sciences at Southampton Solent University. We discuss topics including emotional intelligence, guidelines for using heart rate variability, performance under pressure, and links between personality traits and sports.   More information about my guest: https://www.solent.ac.uk/staff-profiles/academic-profiles/emma-mos...